22 Oct r 1807

L d Eldons Bill

Another consequence of Quorum clauses: doubts in swarms and those doubts unsolvable: debates in multitudes, and those debates interminable. (As for example - )

First take one legislator: and he, like our learned Advisor, one beside himself. The / One/ first proposes an number: one /the first/ proposes another. Between them they " break" the case together, till it is broken quite to pieces: when both combatants are tired out comes a section, such as section 7, composed of a blank.

Next take two legislators, adding to the one beside himself, for example the Lord President. First comes /take/ his learned Lordships first Bill. Here in '.2 in which the problem concerning the bisection of the senate is first started he makes[?] two divisions quietly, saying nothing there about Quorums. But between his first Bill and his second Bill, it looks as if it had happened to his learned Lordship to have had /received/ the honour of an audience /interview/ with /from/ some person who (being one beside himself) was higher than himself, and by /from/ whom he was informed there was no doing without a Quorum /that a Quorum there must be/. In his second /amended/ Bill he accordingly goes to work: and not being one beside himself, experiences no difficulty. In his first Bill, though in '.2 in the case of the divided moiety of the Senate he had seen no reason for saying any thing about Quorums, yet in '.2., in the same first Bill in which he had contented himself in general terms with saying /announcing a distinction/ that the number of Judges sitting together in the Inner House at one time shall be diminished, calling to mind that under the existing regulation or practice nine in the whole Senate was a necessary number, he foresaw that supposing the diminution to proceed a certain length, if the same Quorum of nine continued to be exacted business could not be done: he thereupon saw the necessity of saying something about Quorums, were it only for the purpose of lessening them; and thereupon said five.